Chapter 3 — The Choice
Chapter 3 — The Choice
Nicholas smiled as Grace approached him.
“That’s my girl.”
Nathan’s face collapsed.
“Grace, don’t.”
She stopped beside Nicholas and lowered her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
Nicholas placed a possessive arm around her waist while keeping the gun trained on Nathan.
“You see?” he said. “Six years of marriage matters more than blood.”
Nathan stared at Grace.
But she was not looking at him.
She was looking at the gun.
The moment Nicholas relaxed his grip, Grace drove her elbow into his ribs.
Nathan lunged.
The gun fired.
The bullet shattered the bedroom mirror.
Grace dropped to the floor as Nathan twisted Nicholas’s wrist. The weapon skidded beneath the bed.
Nicholas punched his brother in the wound above his temple. Nathan staggered.
Grace grabbed the gun.
“Stop!”
Both men froze.
Her hands shook, but the barrel remained pointed at Nicholas.
“On your knees.”
Nicholas laughed.
“You don’t even know who you’re aiming at.”
“I know you aren’t my husband.”
“You lived with me for three years.”
“That doesn’t make you Nathan.”
His face hardened.
“No. It makes me better than Nathan.”
Nathan pressed one hand against his bleeding forehead.
Grace motioned toward the living room.
“Move.”
Nicholas obeyed slowly.
Grace forced him into a dining chair while Nathan tied his wrists with an electrical cord.
“Call the police,” Grace said.
Nathan shook his head.
“No.”
She turned on him.
“He tried to poison me.”
“And he owns half the police officers in this district.”
Nicholas smiled from the chair.
“More than half.”
Grace looked between them.
Nathan opened the metal case and removed a thick file.
“Nicholas has spent years building a network under my name. Doctors, police officers, lawyers, bank executives. Anyone who discovered the truth was paid, threatened or discredited.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
Nathan’s face filled with shame.
“Because I couldn’t remember who I was.”
He explained that three years earlier, Nicholas had drugged him and staged a boating accident. Nathan had awakened in a private clinic with severe memory loss.
For months, doctors told him his name was Nicholas Cole.
The unstable twin.
The criminal.
The man obsessed with his brother’s wife.
“They showed me photographs of you,” Nathan said. “They told me I had been stalking you.”
Grace felt sick.
Nicholas leaned back in the chair.
“You believed them because you were always weak.”
Nathan ignored him.
“Six months ago, my memories started returning. Your voice. Our wedding. The scar. The lake house.”
Grace looked at Nicholas.
“Why replace him?”
Nicholas’s smile vanished.
“Because he took everything first.”
Nathan’s eyes narrowed.
“That’s not true.”
“Our father chose you. The company chose you. Grace chose you.”
“I didn’t even know she had met you.”
Nicholas looked directly at Grace.
“But you had.”
Grace’s chest tightened.
Nicholas continued.
“The night before your wedding, you kissed me.”
Grace shook her head.
“No.”
Nathan went still.
Nicholas smiled again.
“You don’t remember because that wasn’t the first time someone used the black vial on you.”
Nathan slowly turned toward Grace.
“What happened before our wedding?”
A memory flashed through her mind.
Smoke.
A locked bedroom.
A man screaming her name from behind a burning door.
Grace stumbled backward.
“The fire.”
The lights suddenly went out.
In the darkness, Nicholas laughed.
May you like
Then the front door opened from the outside.
Someone else had entered the apartment.
